


To Mirror You

by duelstance (valoirs)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: "Crossover" Prompt, Alternate Universe - Bungo Stray Dogs Setting, Alternate universe - Mafia, M/M, Victuuri Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9688748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valoirs/pseuds/duelstance
Summary: There are things, Victor thinks, he's been turning a blind eye to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A self-indulgent crossover piece using the setting of _Bungo Stray Dogs_ for Victuuri Week. You need not have watched the series to make sense of this fic (I hope). For the purposes of this story, Port Mafia is based on Russia, not Japan; I've taken a number of liberties with the setting.

 

 

Yakov summons him immediately after he returns from an assignment, and naturally, this means Victor has to be doubly unbearable as revenge.

At the very least, the thought crosses his mind for a solid five seconds before it falls away in a haze of dull surprise.

He's lived here long enough to understand Yakov's habits, and those in the man's innermost circle know that while violence is rarely his first resort, Yakov's speed at assembling and loading a gun is legendary. Victor's witnessed this firsthand, when Yakov drilled the procedure into his mind as a child. Victor has learned what it means to read someone, to dissect the minutiae of their gestures, and it's through Yakov that he learned what that means in application. He learned early to turn it against Yakov as well, and it's for this reason that he freezes in the doorway as he watches Yakov methodically disassemble and reassemble a rifle repeatedly, a habit the man indulges only when he's facing the onset of a new wave of genuine stress.

Port Mafia's latest leader keeps a barren office—Yakov eschews the finery that the bosses of other gifted organizations in the region embrace, economical in his minimalism. Victor can respect the understated elegance of the blank walls, but in this particular moment it all comes together as a quietly unnerving scene made complete by the uneasy frown at Yakov's mouth.

Well. Yakov hasn't resorted to destroying anything with his gift yet. That has to mean something.

"Yakov," Victor says, closing the door behind him. "I could be taking a bath now if not for this summons." He smiles, voice light, and idly examines a glove. The blood has long dried, but it's still a shame. He likes this pair.

"Vitya." Yakov sets the half-assembled rifle aside on his desk. "What I'm about to tell you does not leave this room."

"That important, is it?"

"Relations with the Japanese branch have been unraveling. There's talk that members of that division are going rogue. I need you in there to assess the situation."

Victor pauses, frowning thoughtfully. "Relations with the Japanese branch? Don't you usually assign Yuri to handle that?" An unusual arrangement, given Yuri's temper, but they'd learned early that he struck an accord with some of the members there and was well-regarded.

Yakov presses his lips in a thin line. "Not this time. Yuri may be emotionally compromised, in a worst-case scenario." He slides a photo across the desk.

It's a glossy thing, the colors gentle and subdued. There's Yuri, caught mid-sentence discussing something, and across from him at the restaurant table is a lady with pretty smile, seated next to a pair of young twins distinguishable chiefly because of their hair. Pigtails and bun, purple and blue. The expression on Yuri's face is less guarded than his usual, something soft and fond. Victor's seen him look at Nikolai Plisetsky the same way.

"And?" Victor taps a finger against his lip. "You want me to eliminate her?"

"Not her. Look in the background."

He looks, and then he forgets to breathe for a moment. In the background, like a specter, is the motion-blurred form of himself, what he looked like as a teenager. Pale hair in a ponytail, a serene smile at his lips. By all appearances his doppelganger could be simply passing through, but Victor looks up, sees the look on Yakov's face, and knows otherwise.

"Someone whose gift lets them transform into others?"

"Perhaps."

It's not like Yakov to be facetious like this. Victor watches him with sharp eyes. "Perhaps?"

"The reason we have a Japanese branch at all is because of some idiotic notion the former head of family had in thinking he could extend his control to gifted individuals overseas," Yakov says, voice gruff. "That entire branch is comprised of people who stayed only because of his coercion from years past. And with that fool gone, they are all volatile variables."

Victor reads between the lines, and he sees the underlying statement: _they will turn against us and destroy us if they can, for trapping them._ It's not an appealing idea by any means. "That doesn't explain the copy of me, here," he says.

"We don't know who that is, or what exactly their gift allows them to do," Yakov says, eyes hard. "But your gift is the most suited for handling an unknown like this."

"All right," Victor says. He sits down across from Yakov and prepares for a long, long conversation. "Tell me everything I need to know."

-

In the end, Victor does not, in fact, go to take a shower after the briefing.

Mulling over his doppelganger, he goes to the rink, changes into his well-worn skates, and moves onto the ice in spite of the fitted suit he's wearing, tugging his tie loose to carelessly toss it to a bench. It's quiet now—he'd wrested the rights for Port Mafia's use years ago, but in reality, he is one of the few who bother to come by.

The most disturbing thing isn't that an entire division of the organization is potentially turning traitor, but the prospect of someone knowing who he was back when he was a public figure, prior to becoming embroiled in the wars between gifted organizations. He'd skated in junior competitions. Yakov had coached Victor from the shadows, indulging in a relic of his own past: his experience as a coach. Victor was the secret Yakov couldn't hide from the organization he was tied to, so Victor followed him into its dark underbelly. By all public accounts, Victor Nikiforov is dead, killed in a car crash, a resonating tragedy for fans who thought he'd grow up to sweep gold after gold in senior competitions. His continued existence is another veiled secret, a trump card to play.

A leash, too. _This is the only life you will know now_ , it seems to say. The reality is that Victor knows his gift is in high demand. There was a reason the previous head of Port Mafia found him, no matter how hard Yakov tried to hide Victor's gift. Even so, it hasn't stopped him from skating all these years in his free time.

On a whim he attempts a quad. There was a time he'd landed a quad flip in competition and Yakov had torn into him for it, shouting over how dangerous it was. Victor remembers being smaller then, more wiry. Maybe if he'd devoted his life to skating he would land one perfectly even at this age. But he wipes out on the ice this round, over-rotating and losing balance on the landing. When he crashes down onto the ice, it's with a laugh.

And he gets up. He does it again.

It's midnight by the time he stops, sagging against the barrier, panting heavily. Midnight when Yuri comes by, scowling.

"Oi, old man," he says, in the same tone he uses when he's calling Mila a hag. "Yakov sent me to tell you to stop being an idiot when you have a flight to catch in the morning. If you stopped being stupid I wouldn't have to come all this way."

"I'm just indulging a bit," Victor says, and he smiles wider when Yuri lets out a disgusted noise.

"Yeah, by making a fool of yourself?"

"You should try it sometime," Victor says in lieu of a real response. "It might help you destress too!" He thinks back on the briefing, Yakov's warning not to say anything to Yuri. _Emotionally compromised in a worst-case scenario_ , echoes Yakov's voice.

"No thanks. I'm not a masochist like you are."

Victor skates to the entrance to the ice, loitering at the gate. "Yuri, what's the real reason you came here?"

"You're going to Japan, aren't you? Since the assignment overlapped with mine and I can't."

Oh, is that what they told Yuri? Victor tilts his head. "I am. Do you want a souvenir?"

Yuri hesitates, then pauses, frowning. He remains stubbornly quiet until he finally says, "No."

"I'll tell them you said hi." Victor flashes another of his too-bright smiles, the kind that Yuri finds most infuriating. "Thinking of someone in particular?"

He's rewarded with another _'ugh'_ as Yuri pivots on his heel. "Forget about it," Yuri snarls as he goes, like a cat lashing its tail in irritation. "I don't need anything from you. Just get back in one piece or something, whatever it is you need to do."

"Oh, Yuri! Does that mean you _care_?"

"Fuck off!"

-

After he touches down in Japan, Victor runs through his mental repository of mission details. Making contact with members in the branch immediately would put them on alert, but independent investigation would likely do the same if he's seen, not to mention put further strain on existing tensions. Victor has faith in his stealth but as a foreigner in a seemingly sleepy seaside town, he's going to inevitably stick out. Which leaves making contact—Yakov had sent word, but Victor's here days early in a move meant to catch them off guard.

On paper he's here to assist with a troublesome series of attacks made by an interloping gang of gifteds from the closest city. In reality he's here for far more.

The Japanese branch's base is at a quiet bar in Hasetsu. Victor arrives in town by cab, and the intention is to go there first. That notion falls the wayside when he realizes, with surprised satisfaction, that there is a rink in Hasetsu. Closed and not in use—likely on its last legs and on the verge of being remade into a different facility—but present nonetheless. Victor tells himself it's not trespassing if he doesn't get caught wandering inside; there's no one there.

At least, that's how it seems, initially.

He makes it inside only to realize that it's cold, that even though the rink seems to be closed by all appearances, the inside is well-kept, the ice smooth and clean. There are no lights on, but he doesn't need them when early morning sunlight is drifting in through the windows, casting a dreamy glow to the glassy ice. There's someone there, a figure gliding at center stage, fabric fluttering with each graceful motion. Victor watches beyond the barrier, in a spot dark with shadow, as the figure drifts into a seamless Ina Bauer. It's a familiar style, made more surreal by the familiar figure—Victor's seen this skater countless times on television for the latest skating season. One of the American favorites.

There's a ripple at the edge of his consciousness, the whisperings of a gift in use. He reaches out with a gloved hand, feeling whorls of his own gift gathering at his fingertips. He could dispel it, right now. He could peer into the innards of this rink and see what secrets are being laid bare in the wake of his own power. The temptation is there. But he lets his hand drop and continues watching, fascinated. He lets himself watch up until he feels the energy in the air stir again, and he sees himself out before he's noticed.

It becomes a habit after that, to come back to the rink again and again between initial chats with the Port Mafia's Japanese branch head, a certain Minako Okukawa, seemingly timeless in spite of her age. The bar she owns lays atop a sprawling network of basement rooms that house all manner of materials that aren't strictly for Port Mafia's sake. Victor's content to turn a blind eye while he's in the business of scrutinizing Minako's intentions, but for all her easy conversation, deciphering the unreadable look in her eyes is far from simple.

"The other members?" she asks at one point, as he's watching her polish off a glass at the bar counter. "They come and go as they please, but we don't always group up together at the same time unless something major happens. You might see Yuuko Nishigori—usually she communicates with main branch. Normally it's Yuri who comes, isn't it? Rather than you."

The smile at her lips looks too amused to be taken at face value, like she's laughing at a private joke.

"He's preoccupied with another assignment for now," Victor says easily, resting a chin in his palm, dissecting her grin with practiced eyes. "He does say hi, though. Is there anything I should relay back to him after everything here is settled?"

"Hah! I'm not the one you should be asking that. Yuuko, maybe. Talk to her, and she'll have something to say, I'm sure."

"I'll remember that," Victor promises.

He takes his time looking into the gang of gifteds that's taken up space on the outskirts of Hasetsu, commandeering use of some of the warehouses closer to the ocean that have been abandoned with businesses drying up more and more in town. The Spades, they call themselves. There isn't anything particularly special about them—they wield gifts that come across as mundane in his line of work. They have a bomb-maker who might try to lay waste to the area to make a statement, but that's nothing to be concerned about. Bombs can be easily disabled, even more so if they're created through gifted means.

With how the group is turning out to be little more than a glorified pack of thugs, Victor's excuses on paper for being here are growing increasingly thin.

In spite of the seriousness of the situation back at the main branch situated in Russia, Victor fondly wastes time in this seaside town, indulging in lodging at one of the small local inns. _We used to have hot springs,_ Minako sighs once, _but most of them closed down as tourism went down._ Victor thinks it a pity; he would appreciate a dip in a hot spring after a long day. Yuuko is scheduled to return from an out-of-town trip within the next few days, and her husband, one of the local doctors, has proven to be little help about her whereabouts. If anything, Victor's timing must be the worst for things to come together like this.

So he indulges, and he goes to the rink again and again, even multiple times in the same day. And every time it's someone different—another figure skater in competition regalia. Sometimes it's a woman, other times it's a man. The costumes run the full gamut of varieties, ranging from ornate in their detail and beautifully simple. The styles, too, range—as do the nationalities.

It's during dusk one day when there's finally a change in the routines: it's one he has never seen. There's a croon of violins in the background as the woman takes up a starting pose, sequins and rhinestones glittering on her black dress, red lining the insides of the skirt. His throat is dry as he watches. There's an addictive grace in the woman's every motion as she moves, dancing a dance a seductress might. At long last he finally sees it: a flicker in the image, and in its place, he sees for a split moment a man in a similar costume, a half-skirt where a full skirt once was, pants where tights had been. And hair slicked back, something dangerous in the tempting expression on the mystery skater's face.

Victor thinks he might have a grasp on what gift he's grappling with now, even as he neglects, again and again, to use his own against it.

The woman's image ripples and melts away into something else as the skater prepares for the next routine. Victor straightens at the sight of the latest persona, captivated, because this time, it's _him_ on the ice—a younger Victor Nikiforov clad in the costume he'd worn in his final performance before he fell off the grid. The doppelganger strikes the first pose, bird-like, the patterns on the costume evocative of feathers. It's astonishingly convincing. Everything aligns perfectly with what he would see in online reruns of his program. Each motion is executed with loving attention to detail.

He knows now, with how he'd surveyed so many routines here, where the facades give way. Where reality insists on something different than what his eyes and mind are telling him. Some of the quads in the other routines are flickering images, like poor television visuals, but the triples in this program are landed perfectly. He knows then that this mimicry of his old junior routine is a perfect copy.

So at its conclusion, he claps.

The skater startles, and all at once the rink is engulfed in a dizzying whirlwind of color, images swirling faster than Victor can catch them. He uses his own gift for the first time since he arrived in Japan—he reaches out, pulls at the power in the air, and lets it unravel entirely, tugging it apart like he has it gripped by a loose string. The illusions fall away immediately under the strength of his gift negation.  In the aftermath, he sees the same man whose image he'd witnessed before, only he stands now in a plain shirt and sweats, his hair framing his face in disarray, and there's mute surprise in the contours of his expression.

"You've been coming here often, haven't you." When the man speaks, it's with a soft hesitation. Anyone else might read it as demureness; Victor can hear the underlying edge.

_Ah. I've put him on guard._

"I do," Victor says, like a vow, like the aftermath of a hushed proposal. He steps forward until he can lean forward against the barrier, propping his elbows up on it. "It's a useful gift, isn't it? Your knack for illusions. Was the music illusion-based too? Or only the images?" His smile, when it comes, is a fascinated thing. He can't exactly hide the excitement in his voice. It's too difficult when he hasn't been this captivated by a gift—or its owner, for that matter—in years. "There were some flaws in how you covered up the flubbed quads—the first illusion in the second routine today came a second too slow, you know. You should have transitioned it in during the takeoff, since the mistake began there."

The man stares at him. Victor smiles back winningly, perfectly poised, and asks, "What's your name?"

A pause.

"Are you feeling shy after that display?" Victor says next, teasingly. "That's a shame. I'd love to get to know the talents in this branch of Port Mafia better." And this time his smile comes together like barbed wire, edged with implications, as he lets his voice dip an octave.

"What makes you think I'm part of Port Mafia?"

Victor lets his smile widen. "For someone with a gift of illusions, you're quite terrible with deception, aren't you?" It's worth it for the way the skater's eyes harden. The man drifts closer to the barrier, the tension in the air palpable, leaving only half a meter between them before he stops. Up close, Victor can study the man's eyes better—the expressiveness of them. A tinge of brown, even as they're dark enough to appear black.

The man seems to be struggling inwardly with his thoughts. After a moment of careful deliberation, he finally says, "So you're the gift negater from main branch. They sent you instead of Yuri this time?"

Victor can't help his pout. "Is that what they're calling me?" he asks, even though he's already known for a long time. "Yuri's preoccupied with another assignment closer to home, and I was free."

The man's eyes glitter. "Main branch wouldn't send their trump card unless something is happening. Is there?"

"Who knows? What the executives in main branch want is anyone's guess." Victor straightens so he's no longer leaning on the barrier. "Shall I introduce myself properly? I'm—"

"Victor Nikiforov," his mystery skater says, a little breathlessly.

Curious. And flattering too, if it didn't have unfortunate implications for potential information leaks. "A fan, are you?" Victor asks. "I didn't realize anyone still cared for my illustrious junior career."

"You might have more fans than you think," the man says softly, pushing his bangs out of his eyes with a gloved hand. Victor tracks the motion. "They reported you dead, all those years ago. But I guess you really aren't. You're alive still. The odds that you'd turn up here, part of Port Mafia." There's a low-simmering curiosity in the man's eyes, tempered with wariness.

A chasm of possibilities yawns before them. Victor reads the tension in the man's form for what it is: that he's planning something, like an escape, even if some level of fascination compels him to stay. It's not something Victor minds—that fascination is mutual. "Before you go," he says mildly, watching the skater stiffen, "what was the name of the second to last routine?" He taps a finger against his lip thoughtfully. "It's the only one I didn't recognize."

" _'On Love: Eros'_."

" _'On Love'_ ," Victor parrots in a low voice, watching as the mystery skater's breath hitches. "And what did you think of, as you skated?"

The man marshals his thoughts. _Two can play at this game_ , his eyes seem to say. Victor welcomes the challenge. "I was thinking that—there are different forms of love. Selfless love, placing others before yourself. The highest form of love, where you give yourself over to something greater. To protect, defend." He skates closer, and suddenly Victor finds himself uncharacteristically out of his element even in his pressed suit as this disheveled skater regards him with something heavy and smoldering in his gaze. "And if selfless love is the highest form, does that mean that selfish love is among the lowest? To want something purely for yourself. To defy, to take something as yours even if it isn't meant to be."

Victor can feel himself opening his mouth, to say something, anything, but the man presses a finger to his lips, wordlessly silencing him.

"And I wondered—what do people do, when someone threatens to take these things away?"

One moment he's there, and the next, he's gone. Victor belatedly remembers to breathe, but when he reaches out with his gift, in search of any power in use, there is nothing. By the time he regains his senses, the man is long gone.

-

The man's name, Victor learns, is Yuuri Katsuki, and he is not a member of the Japanese branch in any official capacity.

What he is, instead: a ghost operative of sorts, someone affiliated with Port Mafia but not officially in the roster. The Japanese branch's very own trump card. Victor plies random members who loiter in Minako's bar with alcohol until he can wheedle out as much information as he pleases, and as expected, there's distressingly little on Katsuki. Minako watches him work with varying degrees of amusement but does little to actually stop him. "Yuuri will be happy learning that our handsome visitor from main branch is so interested in him," she says, with a telling smirk. It only encourages Victor.

Yuuri himself proves elusive. Victor sees him at the rink, still, but the confidence he'd wielded so flawlessly at the end of their initial pivotal encounter appears to have subsided. Yuuri disappears spontaneously when he catches Victor watching, but the consolation is that neither of them stops coming to the rink. It's a small victory.

His stay turns into more of a vacation than an assignment. The Japanese branch is welcoming, and he spends time idling and sightseeing because there isn't much they personally need him to do until the recon team is collecting intel on the Spades. It works in his favor; he takes his time rooting through interactions with members, analyzing any outstanding tensions on behalf of the main branch.

Yuuko returns, finally, after a delay. She looks exactly as she does in the photo Victor's seen, all bubbly radiance and bright smiles, flanked by her two daughters. It's an unusual sight to see such young girls in a bar, of all places, but few pay them any mind, especially once they all retreat to the backrooms to go over data and plans, and the girls hover nearby with quiet understanding, their eyes older than they should be in spite of their childish mischief.

"The Spades are conducting operations in this quadrant of Hasetsu, but what doesn't make sense is how they have the resources to be recruiting from other cities. It would make sense for them to remain stationed in the Greater Tokyo Area. See, they've been finding gifted individuals from this region," Minako says over a sheaf of papers.

"They could be backed by another organization," Yuuko says. "It's not uncommon for small gifted organizations to ally, especially if they have a mutual enemy."

"What are the main groups that oppose Port Mafia in this region?" Victor asks.

"There's the government's gifted department whose agents have been trying to shut us down for years," Nishigori says wryly. "Hard for them to do that when Yuuri is so thorough at destroying evidence."

Another tidbit on Yuuri. So far Victor's learned the man does just about everything, following the recon team to cover an infiltration, teaming with the branch's main interrogators to extract more information. He thinks about what it would mean to have such powerful illusions turned against him, to have his senses manipulated into perceiving pain on all nerve endings, lie after lie stuffed in his mind until he's near-ready to burst from the sheer agony. There's no chance of that when his own ability allows him to negate any gift within a radius of himself. In that, Victor is untouchable. It's almost a shame.

In the end, the best option is infiltrate and cut off the head of the snake, topple the Spades' internal hierarchy and scramble the chain of command. They have evidence that the higher-ups are convening in several days' time; it's enough time to track down all the details of the meeting.

More importantly, he gets to go with Yuuri and several others on the infiltration team while Yuuko plays handler. _We're limited on people with combat capabilities,_ she'd said. The implications as to his role are obvious.

An elimination job. Perfect.

If there's anything Yakov drilled into him better than assembling a gun, it's how to fire one so his aim hits true.

-

"You're here again?"

"What, am I not allowed to come here anymore? You're no fun," Victor says, and he makes the pout in his voice obvious as he leans against the barrier, watching Yuuri. He thinks the man's outfit today suits him well, brings out his form; he isn't in costume, but it's a near thing, with his slacks and button-up shirt and loose tie. It's a horrendous tie, though. Victor thinks maybe he'll burn it if he can wrestle it off of Yuuri, and wouldn't that be a sight. It's not exactly comfortable to skate in this kind of attire, but Victor's done it before; he suspects Yuuri does the same frequently as well, skating in his off-time between assignments, hair still mussed from the adrenaline-fueled motions of a fight.

Yuuri rolls his eyes.

Victor watches him throw himself into a perfect triple axel. Over time there have been fewer and fewer illusions, and he likes to think that Yuuri is getting used to his presence, even welcomes it. He hasn't overlooked the heat of Yuuri's gaze the times their eyes accidentally meet; it's thrilling, seeing glimpses of the man's potential on all fronts, how versatile he can be. His fascination has grown fangs, Victor knows, but even if he could change it, he wouldn't.

Yuuri flows out of a perfect layback spin and comes to a stop as he faces Victor. "You know," he says, "there are spare rental skates here, left over from when this rink was open to the public." His eyes are dark. "Skate with me?"

Victor goes.

After he's retrieved a pair from storage, changed into them, and laced them up, he joins Yuuri on the ice. They must make quite a sight, Yuuri in his collared shirt and Victor in his suit. Maybe he'll mess up another suit, doing this. Victor can't bring himself to care.

At first he follows Yuuri's lead, and then it's all too easy to try seizing it for himself, the same way he catches Yuuri around the waist mid-motion, pulling him closer. He hasn't pair skated in his life, but this comes together naturally, the synchronization easier than breathing. Yuuri is warmth against the weight of Victor's hand. There's something beautiful but sad in the curve of his smile. For a moment it's as if they're dancing, weightless, and then one of them missteps and they both go down in a rush of uncharacteristic laughter.

Yuuri's sprawled over him, straddling his hips. The temptation rears its head again. So Victor reaches out, grips the smooth silk of that ugly, ugly tie, and drags him down.

There's a rush of thought as he kisses Yuuri, sampling the sweetness of his mouth and stealing his breath with a clever tongue. He has to acknowledge now that it isn't so much that he's had little to do on this assignment as it is that he's been dawdling, wasting time, taking his time in ways he hasn't considered before. Days had turned into weeks. Weeks into more than a month. Port Mafia in Russia is home, he knows, and he owes Yakov more than his life, but watching Yuuko and Nishigori laugh together at the bar, and Minako talking fondly with Yuuri the few times the man does show up for meetings, and the twins' wild laughter as they dart around furniture—they're a series of temptations that Victor finds increasingly difficult to resist. And the couple running the inn he's staying at, their warm smiles that remind him of Yuuri's, the way they look at him and see _friend_ not _weapon_ —

It's dizzying.

There are things, Victor thinks, he's been turning a blind eye to.

Yuuri pulls back, lips slick, a line of saliva connecting their mouths. "If you're still thinking about something," he murmurs, "then I don't think I'm doing this right."

He swoops back in, every bit the seduction he'd skated in his _On Love: Eros_ routine, and Victor stops thinking altogether.

-

Victor can't pinpoint when exactly it all starts to go downhill, but if he has to hazard a guess, it comes to a head the planned day of the infiltration, when he heads to the bar and the inside is decidedly _destroyed_. There are people dead; he sees familiar cooling corpses, and to his relief, none of them seem to be Yuuri, or anyone else in the circle he's spoken to most so far.

There's a dropped wallet on the floor. He bends to lift it and stills. There isn't anything of value inside save a few fake IDs and a photo. In the picture, Yuuko stands there with her daughters. She looks younger. But what stands out most is that there are three girls posing with her, their smiles bright and happy— _triplets_. A third child, her hair in a ponytail, dressed in pink.

_Stayed only because of coercion from years past,_ Yakov had said. Victor thinks he knows what kind of coercion it might have been now.

He makes a run for it.

When he arrives at the Spades' makeshift warehouse base, there isn't anyone to stop him—not when the vast majority of its group lies dead on the ground in a veritable bloodbath. He follows the sound of voices and stumbles across the sight of Yuuri, clutching at his shoulder, bleeding profusely, and—

"Anya," Victor says, and the woman who was once the most loyal operative under the previous Port Mafia leader turns to face him, her makeup impeccable.

"Yakov thought he could spare Yuri, but you weren't any better a choice," she says. "This branch was taking steps." She holds up a laminated document. "First autonomy, so they could act for themselves. Then they'd turn their powers against the main branch for revenge. You took too long to quash the threat."

A gifted license, Victor realizes. The print is Japanese, but he's dealt with them enough in Russia to know that they're almost a universal standard in this day and age, permits for gifted organizations to act while the government turns a blind eye on all their activities. For this branch to retrieve a separate one—

"This is a test, Victor," Anya says. "Shoot him, and Port Mafia will be assured of your continued loyalty."

Victor knows, ultimately, that it is no test. Yakov might be head of Port Mafia now, but his authority isn't absolute—there are whole factions within the organization that follow the previous head's creed, his penchant for mindless destruction, his instability. His desire for war and coercion and _that's_ how it is, isn't it? This all ties back to the past, their previous leader, the same man who'd erased Victor's life and, even in death, only needs an excuse to erase him all over again. To eliminate a _threat_.

His heart clenches. Even Yakov had suggested eliminating the branch if it proved to be a threat. He's beginning to despise that word.

"This is going to be a war," Victor says softly. "Whatever your faction—and there is one, isn't there?—is trying to do, Yakov won't stand for it."

"Port Mafia is no stranger to civil war. We have the Guild to back us. The Japanese branch stole from the Guild, and they'll take it back with interest in blood."

He doesn't know what the Japanese branch might have taken, but Victor knows the Guild, of course—another overseas gifted organization with elusive motives. It's a last piece in the betrayal. A faction within Port Mafia had outfitted the Spades all along, to set up a diversionary foe for the Japanese branch. All to eliminate—a trump card, if they have any, and—

_Yuuri_.

He pivots, and he reaches out just in time to bat away a wave of telekinesis as it moves to slam down and crush him and Yuuri in one fell swoop. Victor moves faster than he's ever moved—he pulls his gun on Anya, flips off the safety, fires—

And hits nothing.

"Say hello to Georgi for me," says Anya's voice, long after she's gone.

The entire warehouse shakes.

"We need to get out," Victor says harshly, urgently, and he flings his weapon aside, scoops Yuuri up, fingers growing wet with blood. He's bleeding harshly. "Where are the others?"

"They went to—one of the safe houses," Yuuri chokes out. His voice sounds wet. "I don't—I'm losing control, I don't know what she _did_ to me—"

"Shhh." He hushes him, cradles him close. He watches the light bounce in blinding streams around him as Yuuri's gift spirals out of control. It distorts everything, and for a moment his own senses feel weighted with terror, a mind-numbing nausea that edges to every nerve in his body. Before the sensation can sweep him away, he reaches out with his ability, gently canceling out the illusions before Yuuri exhausts himself.

"We can't meet them yet, not until we know we're not being followed," Yuuri says, weakly, and Victor takes him to the rink, where it all started. They hole up in one of the offices there for the time being, Yuuri shivering against him as Victor unearths aged first-aid kits from musty cabinets to patch up Yuuri's wounds. It's not ideal, but it's possible they're being watched, and he can't risk leaving until after they've had more time to regroup.

"Stay with me, Yuuri," Victor says, leaning his forehead against Yuuri's as the man's eyelids flutter, almost delirious with whatever pain that caused his ability to spiral out of control. Victor adjusts the force of his ability, cloaking it around Yuuri, canceling all illusions before they have the time to form.

"You know, I always looked up to you," Yuuri says weakly, "when I was little. I wanted to become a skater like you. But you disappeared—they said you _died_ —and then the onsen started going under, and it was like everything went wrong at the same time. Port Mafia found Yuuko, they learned about her ability, and they thought they could take Loop away to force her to cooperate."

Loop. The missing triplet, then.

"And how did you join, Yuuri?" Victor asks. Anything to keep him awake, anything to keep him _here_.

"The onsen had debts to pay, our savings were drying up, I couldn't let my sister and parents suffer, and I had this _gift_." Yuuri laughs bitterly. "I hated it, but if I could hide my family away so Port Mafia couldn't exploit them, and protect Yuuko too, it would be worth it. Between me and Nishigori and Minako—we'd all be okay. We'd take Loop back, we'd split off on our own, we'd be _okay_."

"It'll _be_ okay," Victor promises in a murmur. "I'll make sure myself."

Yuuri laughs, reaching out to push Victor's bangs away from his face. " _Nothing's_ okay," he says. "We hate Port Mafia. And you—you're part of it too. Maybe in the end I'll hate you as well." Revenge wouldn't bring back the past or what he used to have, but damn if it wouldn't be _satisfying_.

"You're alive. That has to count for something." Victor steals a kiss because he simply can't help himself. He thinks back to the warehouse, the bodies on the floor, the knowledge that it was somehow _Yuuri's_ doing—that this seemingly unassuming man could kill so easily in defense, for love, for the people around him that he's been trying to protect, and his blood is singing. They say there's a fine line between love and hate, and he thinks with the thrill of the two so similar, he would not mind so much if whatever this thing they have toes to love then hate then back in reverse, a pendulum on loop.

It's the wrong place, the wrong time, but Yuuri shoves Victor down on the ground and presses flush against him, his kisses like wildfire. It's near enough to undo every sense of self-control Victor knows, this desperate yearning for close human contact turning into its own dilemma. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, fear of upsetting Yuuri's injuries keeping him from placing them carelessly, but he sweeps a palm along the curve of the man's backside and swallows the gasp that Yuuri exhales into his mouth. When Yuuri pulls away at last, he keeps Victor pinned in place under his weight, fingers pressing lightly against Victor's throat.

He could squeeze, if he wanted, and Victor would probably let him. It would be easy to say he's being influenced, that the strength of Yuuri's illusions verges on being mind control, but Victor knows that he, of all people, can't claim such a thing. It's all the more terrifying for that reason—and, by extension, all the more thrilling.

"From the start, you were sent to monitor us, weren't you," Yuuri says, and it's not a question. His nails scrape slightly along the soft skin of Victor's throat, and Victor can't help the shiver that runs up his spine. "We knew, and we'd wondered if we would have to deal with you too. I wondered if I would have to kill you myself." Yuuri's shifts, biting a lip as the motion jostles a wound, and traces the contours of Victor's mouth with his index finger.

"Well? Do you still think that's necessary?" Victor murmurs, watching the swell of Yuuri's pupils. He smiles, a fanged gesture even though he shows no teeth.

Yuuri's answering smile is an innocuous, dangerous thing.

"After all of this, when you go back to Russia, back to Port Mafia, I want you to relay a message," Yuuri says. "Tell Yakov that we will be operating independently as a different gifted organization, and that we are not enemies but we are not friends. Tell him that if he doesn't want Port Mafia razed to the ground, he will work with us against this new faction Anya is spearheading. He will give us resources to deal with the Guild." He bends down again, nips at Victor's lips, grinding against him until he lets out a low moan. "And he'll send you to communicate with us more often." His eyes are dark with promise.

"Whatever my Yuuri desires," Victor says teasingly, possessively, and it's worth it for the flush on Yuuri's face as Victor seals that oath with a lingering kiss.

 

 


End file.
